Saturday, May 7, 2011

Hello Kitty Nail Art with Essie Wedding 2011 swatches!

Hi everyone, I have some cute nail art to show you today - hello kitty! I LOVE hello kitty, well actually I love Sanrio. I've been collecting Sanrio character 'stuff' since I was about 14 or 15 (way before Australia even knew what hello kitty was) so I had to rely on hard to come across stores that sold random 'for sale in Japan only' Sanrio stuff and of course drooled over ebay. I was reluctant to do this art because it's SO easy to butcher. Hopefully I haven't butchered her too much:

Even though my favourite character is actually Keroppi, I thought I'd start with hello kitty :-) I'll show you how I did this look below but first onto the swatches! This look features a light blue creme from Essie's Wedding 2011 collection 'Borrowed & Blue'. The collection has four colours and I picked up the mini set:

Left to right we have Borrowed & Blue, Better Together, Made To Honor and First Dance. None of them are shimmer, Borrowed and Blue is the only opaque creme, while the other three are quite sheer.

Above we have Borrowed & Blue - the absolute standout of this collection in my opinion. I do not have a light blue creme that is this gorgeous. I'm not even a blue fan but I must have a full size of this. It is love. Three coats to get the best look but you could get away with two heavy coats.

Above is Better Together and this is a very sheer pink. I actually did 4 coats because I didn't like the sheerness of three.

Above is Made To Honor and it is a very very sheer nude pink. Three coats above and you can see how sheer it still is.

Above is First Dance and it is a bright red that is slightly sheer and I believe this is just two coats. Very bright.

Back to hello kitty nail art! For this look I only need a few colours:

Left to right we have Illamasqua Boosh, Essie Borrowed & Blue (as the base), Essie First Dance (bow), China Glaze Snow (hello kitty head), OPI Fiercely Fiona (nose) and a black nail art pen to touch up the eyes since black scares me.

I started with the kitty heads. And look how messy it is! But not to worry, top coats fixes everything - well unless you're like me and are too eager and paint the top coat on before the red is dry :-| The bows did run actually but it's not too obvious after I made a few touch ups.

Here I've added the eyes, whiskers and nose. Well I didn't like the position of the middle finger nose so I ended up redoing it :-P

Final progress shot before top coat! Looks really awful but the top coat does smooth it all out :-)

Close up thumb swatch above. I think the key was to get the heads wide enough but that's difficult on small natural nails and while your hand is half twisted around on its side :-| But I tried!

Hope everyone is having a good weekend - it is freaking cold here! There was something on the news about Canberra having its coldest Autumn day in 71 years. Was not happy yesterday that's for sure. And neither was my Basil! My poor herb garden is copping it rather bad at the moment. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed the swatches and hello kitties :-) Until next time...